The only thing that stops the dust is the rain. It’s a sweet reprieve, but there is no middle ground. The land is either as dry as the Betty Ford clinic, or as wet as the ocean floor. Everything can be seen from the ridge overlooking Armadillo as John Marston gently bounces along atop...

DAILY MANIFESTO

PlanetSide 2 Would Be A Perfect Next-Gen Launch Title

Here I was playing PlanetSide 2 this week, participating in massive battles with aircraft flying overhead, lasers shooting every which way, and absolute mayhem no matter where I went. I couldn't help but feel sorry for console-exclusive gamers who have been held back from the age of last-gen consoles, but soon that should change.

It's all but confirmed at this point that an Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4—whatever you want to call them—have already been designed and are preparing for a roll-out in the next 24-months. It's no surprise that they're rumored to have more powerful hardware than their predecessors, especially in the memory department. While many gamers see better hardware as simply offering more realistic visual experiences, there are other perks to having more processing power.

Qualities like A.I. and physics are very processing-intensive, and would enhance several styles of video games, but scale is something that just about every genre can benefit from. PlanetSide 2 is the perfect example of how scale can make an experience better. Being able to battle across massive landmasses without loading times and hopping into huge battles seamlessly has rarely been demonstrated. We saw it to an extent with MAG, and Battlefield 3 was a tiny snapshot, but PlanetSide 2 is a whole different animal.

The most difficult task of next-gen consoles is proving that they are worth the investment. You know they're going to be more expensive than their predecessors, and the graphics won't be a quantum leap like we have seen in the past—thanks, diminishing returns. As such, I can't think of a more fitting game to illustrate why next-gen consoles are necessary.

PlanetSide 2 is full of "wow factor", a quality that has become rare as last-gen consoles approach their seventh and eigth years on the market. If it were to be sold as a launch title for the new era of hardware, then gamers would quickly get the memo that jumping to the new generation is worth the price of admission.